Fading Fast
by Minxy
Summary: The spell that made Dawn is falling apart. Can the Scoobies save her? Can they remember that there's someone to save? Sequel to "Between Now and Never."


Fading Fast

Fading Fast

by

Minx Trinket

Zen disclaimer: My sword, no sword / My intention, no intention / My copyright violation, no copyright violation / My profit, no profit / Get off my case, lawyer man

Rating: R

Spoilers: If you haven't seen all of Season 5 (and read my prequels [1][1], [2][2], [3][3], and [4][4]), this will make no sense. If you don't want to read them, the Cliff's Notes version is _a_) Buffy's back and _b_) Spike and Dawn are…ahem…together. You have been warned. 

Summary: The spell that created Dawn is falling apart. Can the Scoobies save her in time? Can they even remember that there's someone to save? The last installment of the "Line" series. I mean it this time.

Author's notes: You can read some actual French surrealist poetry [here][5]. In contrast, the poem Dawn quotes, "Darkness," is _not_ an example of French surrealism and is in fact by Lord Byron. Full text is available [here][6]. (This is, incidentally, another reference to _[Arcadia][7]_, as well as an amazing piece of literature in and of itself.) The "soul lock" that Giles finds is also a real object. Made by (I think---somebody correct me if I'm wrong here) the Tuareg tribes of northwest Africa, they are worn by the sick to keep the soul from leaving the body.

Soundtrack notes: Okay, so I was listening to the _Shrek_ soundtrack the entire time that I was writing this. Bizarre and inappropriate for the most part, but Rufus Wainwright's cover of "Hallelujah" just shreds me every time I hear it. (A brief audio clip is [here][8]. A badly proofread copy of Leonard Cohen's haunting lyrics is [here][9].) If this were an _actual_ episode, it would be perfect for the last scene.

Acknowledgements: To the loyal fans of the Line, thank you for leading me here. And please don't hurt me.

___________________________________________________________________

**soul** \'sōl\ _n_ [ME _soule_, fr. OE _sāwol_; akin to OHG _sēula_ soul]**1**: the immaterial essence, animating principle, or actuating cause of an individual life**2 a**: the spiritual principle embodied in human beings, all rationaland spiritual beings, or the universe….**3**: a person's total self(from _Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary_, 1977 ed.)

Spike crawled into his empty bed and found a few long brown hairs scattered across his pillows. He gathered them up gingerly, reverently. He always teased Dawn about her shedding, but the truth was he liked that she left parts of herself behind for him when she was gone. He settled comfortably onto his back, nestling into the pillows, and held the strands up toward the filtered shafts of rising daylight that skimmed the ceiling of his crypt, safely out of reach. He twined the thin silk around his fingers, pulled it, knotted it, stretched it, smiling. Proof of life, right there in his hands.

Spike yawned. 

His empty hands fell to his chest, and he sat up again to pull off his boots. Tugging at the laces, he noticed with faint disgust that there were little bits of zombie caught in the crack where upper met sole. Wrinkling his nose, he tossed the boot across the room. His neck ached. These nights of Scooby fighting were starting to take it out of him. _I'm old_, he thought.

He scowled at the pillows on his bed. They were bare, devoid of any trace of life. The rats of boredom were chewing at him again.

_I'm old_,he thought, _and alone_.

Something was missing.

Buffy, putting away the dishes, reached for the last two mugs in the dishwasher and noticed that there was only one.

She picked the two mugs up and slid them into the cabinet.

Willow dragged a few more chairs over to the conference table and started arranging them for the night's meeting. She counted them in her head. One too many. She took one away. She returned to the table, frowned, counted again. One too few. She went to retrieve the last chair.

Xander found the Summers' front door open and poked his head into the house. "Hello?" he ventured.

"Xan-man!" Dawn squealed from somewhere in the living room.

"Hey Dawnster," Xander replied, easing himself into the house. He moseyed into the living room, only to be brought up short by the sight of the two figures at the armchair. Spike, smiling like a well-fed cat, waggled his eyebrows at him. "Spike," Xander said, trying for geniality and achieving something more like distaste.

Spike was slouched in the chair, one leg thrown over the chair arm. Dawn was sitting on the floor and leaning against his other knee. Spike's fingers twined and slid through her hair. She glanced up at Spike. "Alphabet," she said.

"Nail polish," he replied.

"Barn."

"Dissertation."

"Arachnid."

"Hippopot---aw, crap."

"Gotcha!" Girl and vampire erupted into giggles. Xander watched this display of reckless randomness, open-mouthed. Dawn explained, "We're playing Word Disassociation. One person says something, and the other person has to say something really fast that has _absolutely _nothing to do with it."

"It's like French surrealist poetry," Spike added, "on crack."

They laughed again, and Xander, who wasn't sure he could _spell _"surrealist" and was feeling, suddenly, like a voyeur, pushed a hand through his hair and shuffled his feet. "Um, yeah, okay, is Buffy around?"

Dawn pointed, "Kitchen."

"Monarchy!"

"Oil lamp."

"Hairbrush."

"Mirror---oops."

"Ha!"

Xander, suppressing a shudder, made his way into the kitchen. Buffy was at the table, squinting at the newspaper. "Hey," she said, without looking up.

"Er," Xander said, "I don't mean to alarm you, but I think I just witnessed Spike and your sister having brain sex in the living room."

Buffy sighed, turning a page. "I know. I've been listening to it all day."

"Why do you let him hang out here?" Xander asked.

"I was sixteen and in love with a vampire once," she shrugged, "so…."

"So you want them here where you can keep an eye on them."

"Exactly."

"My offer still stands, you know," he said, leaning toward her with a conspiratorial whisper. "You wants I should have him disappeared, lady?"

Buffy smiled. It was the first time Xander had seen her teeth in ages. It gave him a twinge of pride to make Her Serene Buddhaness laugh a little. She was hard to crack these days. Xander continued, "Some cee-ment shoes perhaps? Or maybe a little welding accident?"

"You've put a lot of thought into this," Buffy said, raising her eyebrows.

"Yeah, well, I…" Xander began, but was interrupted by a fluttering at the window. A swallow had landed on the sill, beating its wings against the screen. "I…" he continued, narrowing his eyes at it, "I…don't remember what I was gonna say."

"_Gyyyyyyyyyaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!_"

The strangled scream that came from the living room was followed by a heavy _thud_.

"What the---" Buffy said, and darted into the next room. Xander followed her.

Spike lay curled up on his side on the floor, quaking, clutching at his chest, and heaving as though gasping for air. Buffy ran to his side.

"What the hell is Spike doing here?" Xander asked.

"I don't know," she snapped, but her hands were on the vampire, tilting his head back, forcing open an eye. "Spike!" she shouted, "Spike! What is it? Can you talk? What's happening?" The vampire continued to twitch, moving his lips frantically but making no noise. "Xander, help me get him on the couch!" Buffy said.

"No!" Spike said. He leaned over Dawn's shuddering body and pushed Buffy's hands away. "Don't try to move her!"

Xander shouted, "Spike, what the _fuck _did you do to her?"

"I didn't bloody do anything!" he shouted back. "One second we were talking, and then, I--- I mean she, she just---" Spike tried to reel back the events in his mind: the strike like lightning, the pain, Buffy leaning over him--- no, over _her._ He couldn't grasp it. Something was missing.

"It looks like a seizure," Buffy said. "We've got to get her to the hospital."

"_NO!_" Dawn cried, and sat up abruptly. Her breaths were hard, gasping.

"Baby---" Spike began. Buffy pushed him aside.

"Dawn, are you---"

"_DEMON!_" the girl wailed.

Xander crouched. "Where?"

Dawn patted her chest convulsively. "In…in…in…."

"What kind of demon?" Buffy asked.

Spike shoved her. "Give her a fucking minute to breathe, Slayer!" he yelled. He put his arms around Dawn. She buried her face in his shoulder, clutching at his shirt. Contrite, Buffy reached out and stroked her sister's hair. He glowered at her, rocking Dawn gently and murmuring soothing nonsense. After a few eternal minutes, Dawn's breathing slowed to something like normal. Using Spike's body for leverage, she sat up straight, but one shaking hand remained tangled in his clothing. She looked at her sister. Her eyes were jittering in their sockets.

"Demon," she said again.

Gently this time, Buffy asked, "What did it look like?"

"Dark," she said.

"How dark?"

"No, too dark, couldn't see…." Her hand tightened on his shirt and Spike took it in his own. "Inside…."

"Buffy," Xander said.

"Yeah," she agreed to the unspoken suggestion. "Dawnie, hon, we have to take you to the hospital, just to be sure."

"No, please---"

"Just in case, okay?"

"No! Not there!"

"Dawn," Spike said gently. She turned her face toward him, unsteadily. "It'll be alright. I'll come with. I'll be the only Big Bad in the place, I promise."

Dawn swallowed hard. "O…okay," she said finally.

Ignoring the stakes and torches that Xander's eyes were lobbing at him, he helped the quivering girl to her feet. "Who's driving?" he asked.

Bloodwork and CT: normal.

Blood pressure and pulse: slightly elevated.

Diagnosis: _shrug._

"Maybe it _was _a demon," Buffy said.

Spike had come to rather enjoy smoking upside down. He did it in the Magic Box sometimes, hanging his head over the edge of the loft, trying to ash on Xander's head below. Giles allowed him to smoke up there sometimes, away from the customers, near the ventilation shaft, as part of a gentlemen's agreement: Giles let Spike smoke indoors and Spike didn't tell anyone about all the cigarettes the Watcher bummed off him. Here in Dawn's room, his perch was even more cozy, though, alas, no target practice. Knees bent and feet dangling into the bedroom, he would lie the rest of himself out the window along that tiny bit of dining room roof that protruded into the back yard. There was just enough room for himself and an ashtray, and he could count the stars and still hear the stereo in Dawn's room. These were the moments when unlife was good.

He barely smoked half a cigarette tonight, though, and shimmied back into the room. Dawn was sitting up in bed, watching him.

"Why aren't you asleep?" he asked.

"I like watching you wiggle."

Ordinarily, such an obvious attempt at flirtatious banter would…well, it would work perfectly, and he'd bounce onto the bed and tickle her until she couldn't breathe and kiss her until she didn't care about breathing. Tonight, he remained on the windowsill, afraid of breaking her. "How're you feeling?"

"A little better," she nodded. "Way better than when I was fighting that---whatever it was."

He leaned against the window frame with a sigh. "Yeah, well, you don't worry about that. Whatever it is, We'll find it and I'll kill it. It won't get near you again."

"I'm not worried," she said, "I'm…." Her face scrunched a little in concentration. She looked not at but through the vampire, into the night beyond. "…I'm trying to remember…something."

Spike was trying to remember something himself. Things had been slipping past him lately, he knew that. There had been…jumps in his head, like a skipping record, or a moment of snow on the telly. He'd be standing in the middle of a familiar place, and suddenly it would be unfamiliar, or he would know the place but not why he was there. What had gnawed at him for months now was the possibility that the chip had fried one too many brain cells and he was tripping down the primrose path to legume land. Since there was a distinct lack of demon neurologists in the area, he'd told no one and done nothing, hoping it was temporary, a glitch. But this episode with Dawn, and his own jumbled memory of it, had made him wonder if it were something else entirely.

"Has this ever happened to you before?" he asked, picking at his flaking nail polish, shiny motes of black fluttering to the floor. When she didn't answer, he continued, "Maybe not _just_ like this, maybe not so bad. Like you know you're awake, right, but you've got that funny thing like in a dream when---"

"Dream?" she muttered. He looked up.

"Yeah, like when---"

"_I had a dream, which was not at all a dream…._" she chanted, in a voice not her own.

Spike looked up. "What did you say?"

The corners of her mouth were twitching tentatively into a smile. "_…The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars did wander darkling in the eternal space, rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth swung blind and blackening in the moonless air…._"

Spike leapt from the window and grabbed her arms, "_What?_"

"Byron," she said distantly.

"I _know_ it's bloody Byron! Why are you---" Spike caught himself and forced the fear down into the dark, cold places inside of him. Quietly, calmly, he asked her, "You…like Byron, do you?" 

Dawn was nodding, still drifting somewhere far from the room in which they sat. "I always liked Byron," she said, the strange lilt remaining in her voice. He recognized the sound with growing dread. She continued, "That poem especially, so sad, but glorious somehow. Mother didn't approve of Byron of course. Thought his poetry would be a bad influence. But it was so beautiful, so eff…I thought, if I could create things like that, if I could only---"

Carefully, Spike sat down on the edge of her bed. "Dawn?" he asked.

Frowning, she glanced out the window, then back at him.

Swallowing hard, he whispered, "William?"

Dawn smiled.

"Possession," Willow said thoughtfully, thumbing through a musty old book that was bigger than her torso. Tara was leaning her chin on Willow's shoulder, scanning the pages with her.

"It's not possession necessarily," Tara corrected. "I mean, Dawn shook the thing off pretty quick, whatever it was. Maybe it was just passing through."

Willow frowned up at Spike. "You didn't see _anything_?"

"Bloody said that already, didn't I?" he snapped. He fidgeted in his seat, whacking a pencil rapidly against the edge of the conference table. Dawn looked askance at him, then shrugged an apology to Willow, who sighed and continued. 

"Well, there are a couple of possibilities, but it would really be a help if you could remember anything, Dawn, anything at all about how it looked, or maybe what felt like."

Dawn contemplated this. "Scaly?" she ventured.

"That's something," Tara said.

"Yeah," Xander agreed. "A scaly demon. That narrows it down to, what, all of them?"

"Leave her the fuck alone, she's bloody trying!" Spike yelled at him. He threw the pencil, and it bounced furiously across the table. Dawn shot him a warning look. "Sorry," he muttered. Xander scowled but said nothing. Dawn stroked Spike's arm, then took her hand away.

Buffy, wearing a line in the floor with her pacing, said, "Will, is it possible that it's…."

"Glory?" Willow asked quietly. The room grew still. "No," she said finally. "This isn't her MO."

Everyone resumed breathing. "Could something else be using her as a portal, then?" Buffy asked. 

"I guess," Willow said. 

Giles, returning to the table with a cup of tea, stumbled and fell against his empty chair, which teetered and fell over with a sound like a gunshot.

"Sorry!" he said, though whether he was apologizing to the chair or the people wasn't clear. He put his cup down and bent to retrieve the fallen furniture. "Go on, Willow."

She threw up her hands. "There's nothing more to go on about," she said. "Something whacked Spike with bad energy mojo, twitch, thud, twitch, that's it. I don't know what it could be."

Spike leaned forward. "_What?_"

They all looked at him.

"Nothing hit _me_. Something hit---" He gestured to his left, then realized that he was waving at empty air. There was no girl in a chair beside him. There was no chair. There was nothing. "What the fuck!" he shouted and leapt to his feet. The Scoobies jumped back, startled. "Where'd she go?"

"Who?" Buffy asked.

"Who?" Spike cried. "_Who?_ Whadd'ya mean _who?_ Where's---"

He couldn't remember.

He grabbed a pillar for support. "No," he muttered. "There was someone…she was…."

Buffy approached him cautiously. She touched him gently on the arm. He shook her off. Something was missing. No, _someone_ was missing, dammit. He looked around frantically.

"There's a girl," he said. "Another girl. She's supposed to be here, but she's not."

"You mean Anya?" Xander asked. "She's just gone to---"

"_Not bloody Anya!_" His shout shook the walls. "Another girl!

"Who?"

"_I don't know!_" He could see her, see her face, almost, feel her skin, could taste honey on her mouth. "With…green eyes," he said, and looked at Buffy. Squinting at her, he could see--- 

"Sister!"

"Huh?"

He grabbed Buffy's shoulders. "Sister! Your sister. She was here, just a second ago!"

Buffy tilted her head at him. "I don't have a sister, Spike."

"_Yes you do!_" He shook her. "She's a…a thingy, a magic thingy, but she's your sister too! And she was…was…." He looked deeply into Buffy's wondering eyes. "Please, you've got to remember. I…Jesus, I don't know her name."

"Her name…" Buffy said slowly.

"It was something about…about light," he said desperately, clutching at the memories, "about the sun…."

"The sun…." she said thoughtfully. Then she said, "Dawn!"

Dawn grabbed Spike's arm. "Sp…." she breathed, and fell to the floor.

Spike and Dawn huddled together in a corner formed by two bookshelves, curled around each other like kittens. They were murmuring to each other, private reassurances that the others couldn't hear. It wasn't clear to Xander who was comforting who.

He turned back to his pile of books and tried to focus. "Er, Will?"

Without looking up from her scroll, she replied, "Latin and French to me, Germanic and Celtic languages to Tara, squiggly stuff you don't recognize to Giles."

"Right." Xander started separating books into piles, peeping inside covers to check the language. "Just what are you expecting to find?"

Willow held up a finger, her eyes racing across the page to its finish. Then, with a glance to make sure that Spike and Dawn were out of earshot, she told him, "We don't know exactly. Giles thinks maybe that Buffy's right, that somebody's trying to turn her back into a portal to somewhere."

"But you don't."

Willow hesitated. "It's possible."

"But?"

"But that doesn't explain why we were forgetting her."

"Hey."

Xander turned. Anya, laden with pizza boxes, was creeping up to him, concern wrinkling her brow as she took in the grim scene. He took the boxes from her and set them away from the books on the table. She bit her lip. "I missed something very bad, didn't I?" she asked.

"Yeah." Beyond her shoulder, Xander could see where Spike and Dawn were tangled together. Watching them, he noticed something, some _things_ he'd never seen before. He saw how carefully the vampire touched Dawn. He saw Dawn's gentle smile, open, undefended, and saw too that she had painted one of her thumbnails with Spike's shiny black polish. Then he recognized the blackness in Spike's eyes, darker than fear, the color of hopelessness. _Oh my God_, Xander thought with a start. _He does love her._ Then, more shocking still, Xander was hit with a wave of empathy, realizing how much Spike had already lost---a soul, a family, a purpose, a lover, a hero---and how, now, the only thing he had left to love was slipping through his hands like rain. Xander felt himself spilling over with a swelling void of loss---

"Xander?" Anya said. 

He shook himself, and looked at her, blinking. Then he turned and pulled her into his arms. "I love you, Ahn," he whispered.

Spike was banished from the Magic Box around 2 AM, told to go have a smoke and not to come back until he'd calmed the hell down. Once over the initial shock of Dawn's disappearing act, he'dgeared up into shit-kicker mode, haranguing the others to "bloody do something!" After abusing Giles' intelligence, Tara's powers, and Willow's haircut, he'd been manhandled out the door by Buffy, and he parked himself resentfully on the curb, digging out his smokes and flask. 

He thought about the other thing. He tried to figure out a good way to tell them. 

Some time later, as he was lighting his fourth cigarette off the dying embers of the third, he heard the shop door open and close behind him. A moment later, Willow was sitting next to him, staring off into space. He looked at her.

Willow plucked the cigarette from between Spike's fingers and brought it to her own lips. He raised his eyebrows in surprise as she inhaled, then handed it back to him. Then she coughed.

"That's more like it," he said.

"I think we've found something," she replied.

The gathered Scoobies watched Willow and Giles expectantly. Willow was frowning resolutely at the table. Giles, standing a little behind her, removed his glasses, polished them on his shirt, put them back on, then repeated the whole process.

Finally, Spike said, "_Well?_"

Giles cleared his throat.

"It's the spell," Willow said suddenly.

"What spell?" Buffy asked.

"_The_ spell," Willow said. "The Dawn-making spell. We found some references to how it's done, and it's…well, making a person, it's a big thing. I mean, we're talking huge energy here."

"Think of it," Giles said, "as the magical equivalent of powering the entire state of California for a year."

"Right, and so…" Willow continued, her eyes filling and her throat growing tight, "…so the monks, when they made her, we think they made her kinda…temporary."

Silence fell.

"What?" Dawn asked, her voice no bigger than an echo.

"Dawn, love," Giles began. He slid into a chair beside her and took her hand. "when they made you, time was of the essence, and they may have thought only to keep you…I mean The Key…hidden until Glory's time ran out. They weren't, perhaps, weren't thinking much further ahead than that. In a crisis, sometimes, people don't---"

"I'm dying," Dawn said flatly.

"No!" Spike said firmly. He stood and pointed at Willow. "I won't have it. No. Bloody fix it. Plug 'er into something. Charge 'er back up."

"It's not that simple."

"_I don't care!_" he roared."_Fucking fix it!_" He lunged for the nearest bookshelf and tore it from the wall, sending books and charms crashing and skittering across the floor. He snatched up boxes of candles from their display and started hurling them across the room. Buffy streaked across the room and collared him.

"Stop it!" she told him. He howled and jerked away from her, reaching for an enormous statue of Bast. Before he could touch it, he found his arms being twistedbackward and himself face down on the floor, Buffy sitting on his back. He heaved against her. "Calm down!" she shouted.

"Get off him!" Dawn shrieked, and landed on her knees beside them. She pulled at Buffy's arms. "Leave him alone!"

With her free hand, she grabbed Dawn's wrist. "Dawn, you have to calm down too."

The three of them, breathing hard, remained in this tableau for a minute, Spike staring at Dawn, Dawn staring at Spike, and Buffy watching them both. Satisfied, she let go of them and stood up. Dawn threw herself at Spike. They clutched at each other as though they were drowning.

Willow, feeling as though her own heart might shatter watching them, continued, quietly and carefully, "The spell is obviously pretty complicated. I mean, they didn't just make her, they altered history all around her. But the big thing, the thing really takes up the energy is keeping her soul tied to her body, 'cause it doesn't really belong there, y'know? It's gotta be kept in with something."

"What do you mean it doesn't belong there?" Buffy snapped.

"Well, you can make a body," Willow explained, "but a soul can't be made. Every soul is a piece of, like, the original energy of the universe."

"Once that energy becomes entwined with a body, well," Giles continued, "a connection is formed. A permanent connection."

"A soul is drawn to its body, and a body to its soul, no matter what," Tara said.

Spike's arms tightened convulsively around Dawn. The last piece of the puzzle slid into place, echoing inside him like thunder.

"No, wait," Buffy said. "Faith and I---"

"That was temporary too," Giles sighed. "Eventually, you would have reverted to your own bodies. By all rights, Dawn should be gone already. Her soul should have fled this body, and then the spell would have ruptured and returned us to the universe as it was before, with no Dawn and no memory of her. Somehow, she's fighting it. There's something helping her to hang on."

"But we don't know what," Willow said.

"I know," Dawn muttered, so low that only Spike could hear. He looked at her, and knew that she did. They both tried to smile, and failed.

"But…but there's good news, maybe," Tara said.

Buffy's chin trembled. "What good news?"

"Her soul had to come from somewhere," Willow said. "It's possible that in the other reality, the one without _this _Dawn, that she's alive somewhere else, _as _someone else. So she wouldn't really be gone, and maybe we could find her."

"No," Dawn said firmly. "That's not where I came from," she said. She let her finger trace the scar in Spike's eyebrow, the line of his jaw.

"How do you---" Buffy began.

"'Cause I know," she said simply. "I know who I was."

With a slow turning of heads, the rest of the gang gaped at them.

"Who---" Xander began, then stopped. "Oh my God."

"No."

"Buffy---"

"_NO!_" Buffy's whole body shook, as though she'd been struck with a hammer and was ringing in some frequency too high to hear. The old Buffy's fire flared in her eyes. "That's not it," she said. "That's not what's happening. It can't be. It doesn't fit. It doesn't fit what happened. What about the demon? Dawn said there was a demon!"

"The demon was me," Spike said. "She was inside me."

"No."

"I was touching her---" he began.

"It can't---"

"---and when she slipped loose of her body, she slipped into me. Her soul was trying to come home."

"No, it doesn't make any sense."

"It's the only thing that does," Dawn said. She stood and tried to approach her sister, but Spike clutched tightly at her hand. She glanced at him, seeing panic in his face. She looked at their entwined fingers, realizing with a cold shock the source of his fear. She was like a helium balloon. If he let go, she could float away, forever. She squeezed his hand and turned to Buffy.

The Slayer was shaking her head furiously. "Look, Dawn, I know that you…_love_ him---"

"Don't say it like that."

"---but it doesn't mean you've got some sort of _mystic_ connection, okay? It doesn't mean---"

"She _knows _things Buffy," Spike interrupted. Buffy glared at him. "She knows things I never told anyone. Things about _William._"

"Buffy," Dawn whispered, "it's him. He's all that's holding me here."

Buffy's jaw worked frantically. She turned to Willow. "Spike's right," she said. "We've gotta plug her back in."

From there, things degenerated swiftly into shouting and throwing of books. 

Buffy, barking like a drill sergeant, set the gang hopping through the books and the inventory, looking for ideas, answers, Mickey-Mouse stopgaps for Dawn's degenerating existence. Giles fished through the wreckage of Spike's rage and produced an amulet, a small rectangle of hammered nickel silver with a curious double bail, strung on a cord of black silk. "A soul lock," he said, placing it around Dawn's neck. "It's not a permanent solution, but it may help you to hold on a bit longer, until…."

"Thanks," she nodded, straining to smile. She cringed at the sound of her sister's voice, which was rising in pitch and volume as idea after idea turned sour. She clutched at Spike's hand and tried not to jitter. Spike sat beside her, eyes burning, nostrils flared, looking for all the world like a guardian hell hound. She would have laughed if she hadn't felt so much like throwing up. Spike's hand was cold, which must mean, she realized, that hers was as well, because his skin always took on her heat after a while. Feeling his cold, seeing the pale blue veins at his temples, she saw him, perhaps for the first time, as a vampire, a dead thing with a demon inside.

She suppressed a shudder.

"Why _not?_" Buffy yelled. Dawn's head snapped toward her. She was standing with her hands balled into fists at her sides, glaring at a quivering Willow.

"Buffy, what you're talking about, it's too…I wouldn't even know how to start."

"How is it any different from what you did for Angel?"

"It's completely different. It's completely the opposite. You're asking me to make a soul stay in a foreign body."

"The monks did it!"

"But I can't!"

"Why _not?_"

"Because," Willow choked, swaying with the force of it, "_I'm not fucking strong enough!_" Then she clamped her hand over her mouth and ran for the back door. Tara followed her.

Buffy turned and looked at Dawn. Her eyes were wet with tears of rage. "So that's it? The only way to keep her here is to keep her in _him?_"

Giles hesitated, his eyes darting around the room. "Well, for---for now, yes. Buffy, there's a good possibility that somewhere down the line we'll find another solution. But right now, there isn't any time, and if we want to be able to retrieve her soul, it's best that we keep it in this dimension. If we let her…escape into the infinite, we might not get her back again."

Buffy was walking slowly over to Spike and Dawn. The tears were welling over, spilling down her cheeks. She came up to Dawn and took the girl's face between her hands. Then Buffy looked at Spike with a sorrowful half smile.

She decked him.

Spike hit the floor, unconscious, and his hand slipped from Dawn's grasp. Dawn gasped and lunged for him, but found herself pulled into the air. Buffy had her in a fireman's carry over her shoulder.

"Buffy, what are you---" Dawn shrieked.

"I won't let them make you a monster," Buffy said, and dragged her sister from the Magic Box.

It seemed to Dawn that they were flying over the streets of Sunnydale. The city was a blur of brick and neon, and the night air roared with wind. Dawn clutched her sister's shoulders dizzily, felt the weight of the amulet swinging freely from her neck, saw green sparks inside her eyelids, tasted death.

"Buffy," she whispered. "Please."

Dawn saw a rising glow, and she thought for a moment that the sun was coming up, wondering if it would be her last day. But she felt the air grow heavy and wet, and then caught the salt smell. Buffy was taking her to the sea caves. She was hiding her, all over again.

By the time Buffy had secured them a niche in the cliffside, Dawn was feeling thin, weak, and light. The amulet felt like a hot iron on her skin. She looked at her hands and thought she could see the beach pebbles through them. She knew she was fading fast. She looked at her sister, who was pacing the cave entrance, eyes scanning the beach.

"I don't think we were followed," Buffy said. "You'll be safe." Dawn stared at her, gaping. Buffy turned to look at her. "You okay?"

"Why are you doing this?" Dawn whispered.

Buffy frowned at her. "Dawn, they wanted to turn you into a demon. _A vampire._ Do you have any idea what that means?" 

"I know it means I won't die."

"No," Buffy said. "It doesn't. It means you will. You'll be a walking corpse. Maybe forever."

"As opposed to being nothing at all."

"As opposed to being free."

"Disappearing!"

"Dawn, if you let yourself fall into him you'll never see the sunlight again, do you realize that? You'll be living off blood and death. And there'll be a demon in there with you. You've seen that monster. You've faced it. Do you remember what it did to you?"

Dawn closed her eyes, shuddering. Its hot breath was on her neck. She could feel it tearing, devouring---

"Forever, Dawn," Buffy said quietly. "Every day until the end of the world, fighting that demon for control, trying to hold back it's evil. Every day, every second, it'll be trying to push you out, tear you up, destroy you!"

"No, it won't," Spike said.

He stood half-silhouetted in the cave entrance, coat billowing in the breeze. Diffuse moonlight turned his skin to silver, blackened the swiftly healing gash on his cheek where Buffy had hit him. He stepped into the cave.

"I saw it," Buffy spat. "I was there. I saw what it did to her."

"That won't happen again," he answered calmly.

"How do you know that?"

"Because the demon loves her," he said, looking not at Buffy but at Dawn, his face still, his eyes peaceful. "_I_ love her. The first time, I didn't know. I was…I was scared. It won't be like that now."

"You're right, it won't," Buffy said, "because I'm not letting it happen."

"Well, well, well," Spike said, shaking the aura of peace from himself like water from his skin, "it's nice to have you back, Summers, _I don't think_. I take it we're giving up the enlightenment act now? Ye olde bitch is back?"

Buffy hauled back and threw a punch at him. He caught it in his hand, inches from his face.

"I remember a time," he said, "wasn't so long ago, you would have ended the universe to save her."

"You think you're saving her, Spike?" Buffy sneered. "You don't have a goddamn clue what you're doing."

"And you do, then?"

"I've _been there_," Buffy sobbed, shoulders heaving. "Out there. I know. I _know_ what her choices are."

"And you'd rather lose her than let her be with me?"

"_Yes!_" Buffy hissed. She turned toward Dawn, eyes pleading. "It's not so bad out there, Dawnie, it's warm, and…Mom's out there."

Spike staggered. Defeated, he dropped Buffy's hand and leaned back against the cave wall, closing his eyes. His shoulders shook with silent weeping.

Dawn looked from one to the other.

_…Even dogs assailed their masters, all save one, and he was loyal to a corpse…_.

She covered her eyes. "Go," she said. "Both of you."

"Dawn---"

"_GO!_" she shouted. "I need to think, and I don't have a lot of time."

It was the end of the night. The metal smell of sunrise drifted toward the graveyard on the open air, and Spike lay still in his empty bed. It seemed that every sound, the crickets, the night birds, echoed in his hollow body, out of time, out of tears, and out of fire.

And then, the sound, a door hinge sighing open, sent hope surging through him, and he sat up.

Dawn stood in the threshold, smiling.

"Dawn, I---"

She held a finger to her lips, and he fell silent. Then she came into his bed and into his arms. Spike felt her skin (_my skin_), her heart (_my heart_) beating against him. Her lips, salted (_with tears or with the sea?_) blessed his own with their touch. Fingers, hands, limbs tangling, they moved onto and into each other, closing infinite space to nothingness between them and in silence asked each other

_are you sure_

_oh, I am sure_

_the memories_

_they'll be there_

_that I promise_

_but_

_there may be pain_

_there will be joy_

_this time, no lightening_

_no fear_

_and when the world is dark_

_is cold_

_we'll dance together_

_don't let go_

Dawn reached behind 

her neck and pulled 

the cord and let 

the knot 

slip

let 

the 

silver 

fall…

Spike woke to see the filtered shafts of rising daylight skim the ceiling of his crypt. He lay on his back, arms thrown out to either side across the empty bed, and in his hand he felt the amulet, somehow still skin-warm. He closed his hand around it and remembered…

He remembered everything.

He brought the amulet to his body, tied the cord behind his neck, and let the pendant rest over his tranquil heart.

_Hullo, Bit,_ he said to his Self. _I'm so glad you're home._

   [1]: http://www.fanfiction.net/index.fic?action=story-read&storyid=313993
   [2]: http://www.fanfiction.net/index.fic?action=story-read&storyid=315002
   [3]: http://www.fanfiction.net/index.fic?action=story-read&storyid=316298
   [4]: http://www.fanfiction.net/index.fic?action=story-read&storyid=335296
   [5]: http://www.alb-neckar-schwarzwald.de/surrealism/gascoyne-translations.html
   [6]: http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/poems/byron7.html
   [7]: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0571169341/qid=994739591/sr=1-6/ref=sc_b_6/103-0969023-0445452
   [8]: http://www.cdnow.com/cgi-bin/mserver/SID=524642180/pagename=/RP/CDN/FIND/album.html/ArtistID=SHREK/ITEMID=1379161
   [9]: http://www.getlyrics.com/lyrics.php?Letter=B&Artist=Buckley+Jeff&Album=Grace&Song=Hallelujah



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